Author
Topic: Pens, Paper, Office Supplies (Read 21695 times)

I love the idea of colored staples! I'm not sure I've ever seen any, but I don't staple things too much, so I might not have looked hard.

I will check out the Pilot B2P pens. I always see the big advertisement of "made of recycled plastic bottles!" and I wonder if that's just a big gimmick, like the pens don't actually work that well. I'm glad to have a recommendation for them!

I like the Uniball Signo pens--I think maybe those are same as 207? They really got me on their new BLX line, though. "Revolutionary new colors!" I guess I thought they'd discovered a new wavelength of light or something? They call them "black-infused red," "black-infused green," "black-infused blue..." Black-infused green is... black. Black-infused blue is... black. Black-infused red is... a muddy brown. At least, this is my experience with them, on a variety of papers. Don't get me wrong, the actual pen is nice and writes well, I just wouldn't have spent the extra money for the "new" colors if I'd known.

My partner recently gave me the best gift in the world. She said "Ya know Glitter, my office at work, it's blah. Can you pick me up some fun office stuff?"...she gave me a reason to spend hours in office supply stores!!! I mean, I did it anyways, but now I had an excuse!!!!

I love office supplies. It's kind of a thing in my family. Staplers, pens, I have a box filled with spiral notebooks, folders, binders. I get more excited then I should when I see school supplies roll out. I keep saying I'm gonna go back to school just to have a reason to buy school supplies. Though this year I got to have some fun, a friend of mine is a teacher so I asked if I could donate things to her class room, she said yes and oh boy! She teaches second grade, so you still get to buy the fun stuff!

However...I spent some time testing out various pens when I started doing an accounting course that required me to handwrite various ledgers. My go-to pens had a hideous tendency to drop blots on the ledger paper.A friend of mine had a selection of pens of various makes that he'd collected over the years, and he handed them over for my deliberations. I settled on a nice Parker (bottom of the line, so around $8 each, if I recall - but a distinct step up from the black finetip Papermate pens that I bought for $10 a box), and I buy an extra every so often.

I put together a writer's kit for my sister for her birthday - a Parker, a wooden box full of slips with writing prompts on it, a Staples-brand little notebook with a matching pen slipped through the loop on the binding, and (I think) a larger notebook as well. I bought a mini-notebook and pen for myself at the same time, and it has seen so much use this year - it fits nicely in my purse or my knitting bag, so grocery lists and tracking the rows on the current knitting pattern both happen inside. Sadly, the binding isn't wonderful: pages have come loose, and I've had to reinforce the loop for the pen. It's been worth the dollar I spent on it, though...

One of the benefits of this workplace is that we have a big supply shelf in the mailroom, and we can help ourselves to whatever we need. As a result, I've tried out a few pens new to me, and have become rather fond of a black rollerball pen. I'd specify make and model, but in order to keep it at my desk, I ended up taping a fake daffodil to the top of the pen so that no one could possibly mistake it for his/her own and walk away with it. The tape obscures all the writing on the clip except G-2. On the plus side, I was able to keep track of the pen long enough to run it dry, then start on a second (also daffodil-bedizened).The standard notebook on the supply shelf is 7.75x5", coil bound, green paper (narrow ruled with blue lines), 70 pages, and I've grown rather fond of that as well. I don't think I'd buy one for personal use, though - it's too strongly associated with work.

I love very fine pens, .3 - .5 are my favorites. I like the Pilot Precise V5 retractables best, since I don't have to worry about losing the cap. I also have a large collection of Staedtler pens and highlighters.

My favorite paper is a heavy bond, college ruled and perforated spiral notebook with a plastic cover and heavy cardboard back. Mead makes a professional line that meets my requirements and those are sold at warehouse stores in packs of 4 for $11 US.

For school, I go at the beginning of the fall semester and buy different color covered spiral notebooks, enough for one each for all my classes and all of DS' high school classes. I have the Post-It labels and label tape to label each one for organization.

I don't like notebooks with dividers.

Logged

ďAll that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."-J.R.R Tolkien

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who buys pens by the package and notebooks by the gross.

Right now I've got 6 of the Phat pads on my desk, little notebooks that are 6.875 in x 4.875 inch. I use them for transcription words. One has a list of my shortcuts, and two others have pages I made up for particular procedures with shortcuts. Yet another is full of obscure terms I've encountered. I usually hear a few a week, so I can go through a notebook like this in a year or so. When I was the church's music leader I used notebooks like these to list the hymns, solos, etc. since they fit on the podium much better than full-sized notebooks.

I prefer the wider ruled paper and medium point pens, because I've always had large handwriting. Right now I'm writing with a Bic round Stic pen. They work just fine for me. My favorite "fancy" pens are the R2 INC ones I get at the dollar store. For a long time they only came in blue and black, but this past summer I found them in bright colors.

I've also got a bunch of diaries. I've started keeping one on my desk to write my thoughts as I'm working; it's rather "stream of consciousness" in style, but great to record the last job number of the previous day so I can see where we are. I also write down non-work items that are important, like strange weather or when the letter carrier complained about the bushes needing to be trimmed.

My dad worked at an office supply store when I was growing up. It was in an old building downtown. The smell of ink brings me back in an instant! They sold and serviced mimeograph machines (later copiers) and adding machines in the back and had pens, pencils, etc. in the front.

I don't dare go into Office Max or Office Depot (we don't have a Staples here) without a very short list.

It was definitely the back-to-school sales that broke me this year! I was doing so well trying to use up the notebooks I already have. But then I cracked and bought a few new notebooks, and next thing you know, I'm doing a sweep of all the office supply stores in town. Gordman's used to have some nice stationary for cheap, but it seems like they've gotten rid of it all. TJ Maxx had some nice journals on sale, though. I've come to quite like the brand C.R. Gibson--they have several different types of bound journals that are pretty to look at and seem to have good quality paper.

I am such a sucker for any journal with a pretty collage on it. They're often about cities, mostly Paris for some reason--silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, some handwritten French words, perhaps a bird or flower or bicycle... A lot of my long-sleeved t-shirts are like that, too. I must have half a dozen shirts exalting Paris.

Oh, Joann Fabrics was a good place for journals, too. They also have "dollar bins," although a lot of stuff is actually more than a dollar, although not much more. I think mostly they had the spiral-bound journals with hard covers.

I used a Sharpie pen I picked up somewhere, and it wasn't really my cup of tea. It wasn't as fine a point as I'd expected and I didn't like the way it got fainter and fainter as it was used up. That kind of drives me crazy, because it's often such a gradual thing that I don't notice it right away, then I flip back through several pages like, "How did I put up with this!?" But, so many other people seem to like them, that I might try a few more. Maybe I just got a dud or something.

I also recently tried a Zebra G-301 retractable gel pen and quite liked it. They're a little more expensive because they're made of steel (?? I'm not building a skyscraper here!) and you're supposed to refill them. My dad LOVES refillable pens. I dunno, I have a short attention span and I get bored if a pen lasts too long.

I know this is strange but I often think a notebook appeals because it's literally a tabula rasa.

The cover, the style, the paper all suggest a certain personality but you never know exactly how it will turn out. A Celtic style may wind up holding recipes. A Chinese style may become a place to think out messages before posting on E-Hell. The modest black and white marble version that you bought because it was so cheap may become the repository of you most profound thoughts.

In a way, notebooks can be like children. You intend they'll turn out one way but the reality is often something very different.

Usually I have a mishmash of pens because I've been doing the whole "buy what I can afford" routine for a while, which isn't much. Last year there was a day where about twelve or thirteen vendors of office supplies came through our office and EVERYONE went through. Got pens, highlighters, papers, stickers, all sorts of things. That's where I got a lot of the pens I use now. And after we went we were all told by one of the managers that the vendors were ONLY for those who had purchasing power. Meaning about ten people in the entire building. They had twice as many large pizzas for those who came through. I'm pretty sure the vendors were counting on normal people coming through and speaking up to the people with the purchasing power in favor of what they wanted.

The coolest thing I picked up was a Sharpie Gel Highlighter. I took that one home because EVERYONE wanted one, and I knew mine would be stolen otherwise. It's seriously awesome, it doesn't bleed through the page and is dry to begin with, so it doesn't smear. If you leave it uncapped, all you have to do is rinse it off and it's clean again, and it never really dries out because it's not based on ink. It got me all sorts of geeked out.

And yes, the UniBall I mentioned is the Signo, it's just so well played with that the Signo is gone and the only clue I had left on it was the 207.

The only problem I have with the B2P is that there's no grip on it, so if you do a lot of writing all at once and you're used to a softer grip, you'll have to get another grip to add on to it, but it's otherwise a really awesome pen. I actually take the tip off and play with it when I'm bored and waiting for some sort of computer component to load because I can't keep my hands still. Actually, I disassemble most of my pens on a regular basis, so a pen that's easy to take apart and put back together is a definite plus for me!

I journal in spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks (usually larger ones). After years of government work I can't use anything but a standard issue medium point black ball-point pen. My hand just doesn't respond to anything else. I'm looking for a fountain pen that I like, but haven't found the right one yet.

Last year DH bought me a stunningly beautiful journal covered in hand-tooled leather with cotton fiber paper. It's so beautiful that I haven't used it yet. If I use it, I won't have it to use (does that make sense).